Terranova Test Scores

You will find two pieces of paper. The first, "Home
Report," shows a bar graph.

Please note your child's "grade level." If your child is in
grade 6.8, that means she took the test in the eighth month of
sixth grade.

The gray band across the center of the page shows the
range of scores for an average student. If your child's score falls
in this range, congratulations! Your child is on grade
level! If some of your child's scores are above average, that
is even more wonderful. If some scores are below the average range,
these pinpoint areas of concern for us to work on next year.

Please pay particular attention to the three most important
scores: the Reading Composite, the Math
Composite, and the Language Composite score. These are
your child's overall scores; the other bars represent sub-tests
that contribute to these overall scores. The Total Score is
the average of these three scores.

On the second sheet you will find an Individual Profile.
This is intended to help the teacher see exactly which problems on
the test each child has answered incorrectly, but we have chosen to
share this school report with you as well. Look at your child's
percentile score for each individual performance objective. If your
child's score on "Multiplying Whole Numbers," for instance, is
relatively low, you will know you should work on the multiplication
tables over the summer.

On the back of the Individual Profile, you will find some
"Norm-Referenced" statistics which compare your child to others who
took this test. The "NP," or National Percentile, is
the same score which is shown on the bar graph on the Home Report.
This score compares your child to every child across the United
States who took this test. If your child scored 70% on a particular
sub-test, it means he or she did better than 70% of all the
children in the country who took this particular test.

Parents are often concerned when they see a score such as 75%.
They may think that this means their child has only completed 75%
of the test questions correctly. (That would mean a grade of C, so
no wonder they are concerned.)

However, this is not the meaning of the percentile score. If
your child has earned an NP score of 75%, this means your child is
in the top 25% of all the students in his or her grade who
took the test this year across the entire country. This puts your
child in the top quarter of all students, an achievement of which
we should all be proud.

"GME" or Grade Mean Equivalent is also a highly
interesting score. A child may have a Grade Equivalent which is
higher than his or her actual grade level. A child who is only in
the eighth month of second grade (2.8), for instance, might have a
Math score of 4.8.

This means that he did as well taking the second grade test as
the average child in the eighth month of fourth grade. (It does not
mean, however, that he did many fourth grade problems, because,
unfortunately, there were only a few on the second grade test.)

We are simply amazed at some of the GME scores we see our
students have earned this year.

One reason we administer Terranovas is to find areas of relative
weakness on which individual students need to work.

We notice that several students need extra work on math
computation. We urge you to make sure your child is spending
some time each evening working computation problems as part of math
homework. Sometimes, when students have moved on to conceptually
difficult topics such as Pre-Algebra, we forget that they still
need to practice multiplication and division just a little bit each
day to keep up their skills and their speed.

We are very disappointed to see that quite a few students score
lower in vocabulary and reading comprehension than in
other areas of the test. As much as we read and work on vocabulary
during the school day, this work in school cannot take the
place of wide reading to broaden a child's vocabulary.

It may be that, when parents see that their children are strong
readers, they feel they do not need to do anything further to
encourage reading at home.

But the more children read, the better they will perform on
standardized reading and writing tests, and the better they will be
prepared for college. Schoolwork is about basic literacy, but it
is at home that a child develops a love for reading.

Is your child spending too much time on the computer,
watching TV, or playing video games, and not enough time each day
reading for pleasure? Even valuable scheduled activities such
as soccer or music practice should not take the place of daily
reading.

There are such a wonderful variety of books available for children
today. Does your student prefer non-fiction? Biography? How-to-do-it
books? Magazines for children? Newspapers? What about fiction? Does
your student read novels? Science fiction? Adventure stories?
Historical fiction? Stories about friendship?

You do not need to spend a lot of money on books to establish the
reading habit. How about a weekly visit to your local library?

No amount of reading instruction in school can take the place of
reading at home, every day, for pleasure. Read, read, read. And read TO
your child as well, no matter what her age.

Even when children read a great deal on their own, they may be
skipping unfamiliar words. You, as parents, need to take particular
steps to make sure your child is learning new vocabulary
words when he reads. You should ask your child to circle
unfamiliar words or write them on a piece of paper or post-it
note. Then you should go over these words with your child,
look back at the passage, and explain the meaning in
context. If the words are unfamiliar to you, too, then you should
look them up in a dictionary with your child, and go back
and interpret the passage.

This is especially important for children whose families speak a
second language at home. Even when your child is fluent in English,
her vocabulary may suffer relative to third or fourth generation
English speakers because you, yourself, do not use as rich a
vocabulary as some others do. This is a very common issue for first
and second generation Americans, especially when they speak Asian
languages which do not share many cognate words with English.

I would like to share with you our school's statistics.

Our second graders' Grade Equivalent scores are as
follows:

Reading 4.2

Vocabulary 4.3

Reading Composite 4.2

Language 11.0

Language Mechanics 6.8

Language Composite 8.8

Mathematics 6.1

Mathematics Computation 4.1

Mathematics Composite 5.0

Spelling 4.2

Total Battery 6.5

Goodness gracious! Our second graders are reading as if they
were 4th graders, and editing and punctuting as if they were 6th
graders! Their Mathematics scores are like those of 5th graders!

Our third graders' scores are as follows:

Reading 8.3

Vocabulary 5.7

Reading Composite 7.1

Language 10.1

Language Mechanics 10.5

Language Composite 10.4

Mathematics 6.7

Math Computation 6.6

Math Composite 6.7

Spelling 6.1

Total Battery 8.2

On average, our third graders performed as well as
average 8th graders would have performed, had they taken
this test. I find that amazing. I certainly look forward to teaching
this wonderful group of students in 4th grade next year.

The scores in our Upper School are equally
impressive:

Our Fourth Graders' average scores are as follows:

Reading 10.5

Vocabulary 8.5

Reading Composite 9.7

Language 11.7

Language Mechanics 9.8

Language Composite 11.1

Mathematics 8.1

Math Computation 7.0

Math Composite 7.8

Spelling 7.8

Total Battery 10.2

Here are our Fifth Graders' average scores:

Reading 12.9

Vocabulary 8.9

Reading Composite 11.6

Language 12.9

Language Mechanics 10.5

Language Composite 12.8

Mathematics 10.1

Math Computation 8.7

Math Composite 9.6

Spelling 10.0

Total Battery 12.9

Our Sixth Graders' scores are as follows:

Reading 12.9

Vocabulary 11.5

Reading Composite 12.9

Language 12.9

Language Mechanics 12.6

Language Composite 12.9

Mathematics 12.9

Math Computation 11.4

Math Composite 12.9

Spelling 11.8

Total Battery 12.9

Our average 7th grade scores are as follows:

Reading 12.9

Vocabulary 12.7

Reading Composite 12.9

Language 12.9

Language Mechanics 12.9

Language Composite 12.9

Mathematics 12.9

Math Computation 12.9

Math Composite 12.9

Spelling 11.0

Total Battery 12.9

Our 6th and 7th graders are performing as if they were 11th to 12th
graders! The highest GME score one can earn is 12.9, the ninth month of
12th grade. Remember, however, that these are average scores. Many
individual children have disappointing scores on particular subtests.

Our average 8th grade scores:

Reading 12.9

Vocabulary 12.7

Reading Composite 12.9

Language 12.9

Language Mechanics 12.9

Language Composite 12.9

Mathematics 12.9

Math Computation 12.9

Math Composite 12.9

Spelling 11.5

Total Battery 12.9

Our 8th grade students are, at average, at the ceiling of the
scores possible, the last month of 12th grade. Years of grading
college papers lead me to believe that the average college student
would not score as well on these exams as our middle school
students do. Hey, what about that spelling score, though? Why is
that not perfect?

Our scores clearly show the cumulative advantage of each
year spent at the Spring School.

Enjoy your summer! If you have any questions about your child's
scores, please call me at school to discuss them. I am in and out
of the office, but I will certainly return your call as soon as I
can. We can also set up conferences with most teachers.